A Multi-Protocol Home Automation System Using Smart Gateway

Abstract

Smart Home is one of the most established applications of the Internet of Things. Almost every equipment we use in our daily life—appliances, electric lights, electrical outlets, heating, and cooling systems-connected to a remotely controllable network, giving the user’s ability to remotely control and monitor the house, save energy without compromising on comfort and ultimately improve the quality of experience of staying in the house. We present a cost-effective system and address a major challenge that the industry faces today-Protocol Compatibility. To address the challenge, we make use of separate gateways/bridges for each network and an open-source home automation framework called OpenHAB, where each bridge links with a single master Wi-Fi gateway, providing a single window of control through an Application or a web interface for an integrated Smart Home. We integrate an elderly health monitoring device-Beehealth with OpenHAB; addressing the paramount need of a portable, accurate, and efficient health monitoring and fall detection device. We present two methods for fall detection, namely: threshold-based and Neural Network-based, with the latter resulting in 94% accuracy for fall detection. We evaluate the Smart Home devices on parameters like syncing time, battery life, recharge time, deployability, and cost. © 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.